17 Peter F. Drucker Quotes on Politics

Peter F. Drucker quotes on politics

2. This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers. ...the most striking growth will be in 'knowledge technologists:' computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals. ...They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as 'professionals.' Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social--and perhaps also political--force over the next decades. -- 'The next society' Economist.com (November 2001)

4. ...all earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it. -- The New Pluralism Leader to Leader, No. 14 (Fall 1999)

14. Increasingly, politics is not about 'who gets what, when, how' but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about 'the right to life'...It is about the environment. It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed...None of these issues is economic. All are fundamentally moral. -- Atlantic Monthly (1994)

27. If 'socialism' is defined as 'ownership of the means of production'--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country. -- The Pension Fund Revolution (1976)

34. In the political, the social, the economic, even the cultural sphere, the revolutions of our time have been revolutions 'against' rather than revolutions 'for'... On the whole throughout this period the man--or party--that stood for doing the positive has usually cut a pathetic figure; well meaning but ineffectual, civilized but unrealistic, he was suspect alike to [by both] the ultras of destruction and the ultras of preservation and restoration. -- Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959)

40. Communism is evil. Its driving forces are the deadly sins of envy and hatred. -- Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959)

41. Through systematic terror, through indoctrination, through systematic manipulation of stimulus, reward, and punishment, we can today break man and convert him into brute animal. ...The first step toward survival is therefore to make government legitimate again by attempting to deprive it of these powers... by international action to ban such powers. -- Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959)

42. No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil. -- Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959)

55. We still think and talk of the basic problems of an industrial society as problems that can be solved by changing the system, that is the superstructure of political organization. Yet the real problems lie within the [industrial] enterprise. ...our representative institution... a mirror in which we look when we want to see ourselves. -- The New Society (1950)

61. Unless the power of the corporation can be organized on an accepted principle of legitimacy, it will...be taken over by a Central government... -- The Future of Industrial Man (1942)

62. We have only one alternative: either to build a functioning industrial society or see freedom itself disappear in anarchy and tyranny. -- The Future of Industrial Man (1942)

63. Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions--as in moral truth and accountability they are. -- The Future of Industrial Man (1942)

64. Unless we realize that the essence of Nazism is also an attempt to solve a universal problem of Western civilization--that of the industrial society--and that the basic principles on which the Nazis base this attempt are also in no way confined to Germany, we do not know what we fight for or what we fight against. ...The war is being fought for the structure of industrial society--its basic principles, its purposes, and its institutions. -- The Future of Industrial Man (1942)

65. This is a political book... It has a political purpose: to strengthen the will to maintain freedom against the threat of its abandonment in favor of totalitarianism. -- The End of Economic Man (1939)

72. Education can no longer be the sole property of the state.

76. The non-profits spend far less for results than governments spend for failure.

83. [about Keynesian government spending to relieve economic depressions] It was like a doctor telling you that you have an inoperable liver cancer, but it will be cured if you go to bed with a beautiful seventeen-year-old.